‘It’s Gotten Crazy’: One Bank’s Race To Get PPP Funds

Since the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) started a month ago, Lindsay St. Pierre has been living and breathing PPP loans.

At 10 p.m. on a recent Monday, she was nearing her 14th hour of working on applications for the program, which offers small business owners a forgivable loan that covers two months of expenses, in exchange for keeping employees on their payroll, or rehiring them.

The program, which has been criticized for both its design and its implementation by the U.S. Small Business Administration and participating banks, has nevertheless been the most popular product at Brookline Bank for weeks.

“It’s been a roller coaster, to be totally honest, because it really had a bit of a shaky start,” said St. Pierre, a business banking officer with Brookline Bank.

In her job, St. Pierre is often the first person businesses go to when they want a loan. She answers their questions and helps them fill out the paperwork.

“It sounds simple, but when you have a couple hundred at a time coming in at the same day, it’s not,” she said. “I think I looked back at one point, I sent like 1,800 emails.”

And it’s mentally draining, St. Pierre said, “especially when we’re racing against the clock to make sure these people get their funding. If I drop the ball on one, that’s a whole business that could potentially go under.”

It’s a lot to carry on her shoulders, especially now because she is also pregnant and expecting to give birth any day.

Even so, she said she has been working about 14 hours a day lately, and so have many of her colleagues.

This small, Massachusetts bank has processed more than 1,100 PPP applications since early April, worth about $231 million. The bank normally does only about 75 business loans per month, according to a spokesperson.

Read the rest of this story at WBUR’s website.